According to The East African, the waiver of fees on all mobile financial transactions by telecoms during the COVID-19 lockdown has led to increased value and number of mobile money transactions in Rwanda. Moreover, data collected by resource centre insight2impact, and released by open forum for development NextBillion, indicates that the money transacted grew from USD 11 million on 15 March, when the lockdown began, to USD 25.6 million in late May 2020.
Therefore, the National Bank of Rwanda instructed MNOs to waive charges on all transfers with bank wallets, person-to-person and merchant fees on payments. Furthermore, the data shows cash-outs from mobile wallets decreased sharply since the lockdown started and are now worth less than half of their January 2020 value, while mobile merchant spending went up.
Although this behaviour is unlikely to continue beyond the lockdown, the growth has shown that with policy support, digital payments can compete with cash, The East African reported.
Every day we send out a free e-mail with the most important headlines of the last 24 hours.
Subscribe now